Energy Efficient AMD Processors Reach Retail
by Justin Thomas, Virginia on 07. 8.06
In May, AMD announced that their new Athlon processors were built for energy efficiecy. AMD said the processors would cut the power requirements of desktop processors by over one-third, boosting the performance-per-watt process. Basically, the processors will reduce power consumption in active and idle states. We featured AMD previously for their green energy initatives, and because they are reducing the lead contained in their chips.
Now, the new AMD processors, the Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2 and Sempron processors are currently available in several stores in Japan.
A number of stores in Japan have begun to sell energy efficient versions of AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and 4200+ models, which consume 65W, down from typical 89W thermal design power (TDP).
In terms of energy consumption, laptop computers consume much less power, and they run on DC voltage — an advantage for off-grid users.
:: Via X-bit Labs
A 39 watt version is also coming out, IIRC.
AMD has made a number of small improvements to the power efficiency of the processesors since introduction to bring down the TDP. They already have chips running much cooler than the max envelope including the Opteron cores which have already been seen running under the new 35 watt envelope. My real concern is that these news chips aren't really anything new at all, but are a result of "binning" currently produced chips.
Here is the general idea. Every chip made has a number of small errors and defects. That's generally ok to the final product. Lines can be made a litle thick or thin and still work fine. However these little changes effect the amount of resistance (and thus heat) of the chip durring operation. The more resistance, the lower top speed the chip can be run and the more power it has to use. Manufactures just test each chip off the line and put them into catagories (bins) depending on their properties (good to worse). Since we already know that AMD is making some chips that can already run in this power envelope, my suspicion is that they will just start "binning" those more efficient processors away from the standard 939 socket lines and into the new energy efficient AM2 socket lines. The end result? The company still produces the exact same product, but instead of some people getting randomly more efficient processors, people can now pay to have that gaurantee. Overall... I'm not sure it's a win. But I do like that it's become something worth marketing at least.
I think it's great that AMD is reducing power and lead, but I don't see any mention (even in the archives) of Intel's advances in this area.
We should be cheering everyone who makes advances in this area. And, since Intel owns 80-85% of the market, their advances have a greater impact overall.
You're right, these new chips are just chips that have been tested and "binned" as low power. We'll have to wait for th K8L architecture to see if AMD improves thermal efficiency some more, but I haven't read much about that.
The biggest impact - IMHO - of AMD's K8 design was to force Intel to react and drop its Netburst architecture which was super power-hungry.
As an electrical engineer working in the mobile electronics industry, I know the difficulty in making things low power. Regardless if these chips are architecturally the same as their non low power cousins, I'm sure there have been fab (aka factory) tweaks which have helped allow for lower power versions. Cheers to AMD.
Sun's new ultrasparc chip can run 8 cores with 72 watts. Which blows both intel and amd out of the water with it's power to watt ratio. It's for servers only though.
The ""cool-n-quiet" technology in the AMD Athlon 64 X2 chips reduces power consumption when you do not the horsepower, which is most of the time. My desktop tower with a Athlon 64 X2 draws only 60W at windows desktop, but if you really want to save power the Mac Mini with the Intel Core is only about 30W. The monitor power is in addition to that. A CRT uses around 100 watts verses 30-40 watts for a 19" LCD.
Paul, I am glad you mentioned the cool-n-quiet technology. Not only does it decrease voltage to the processor during low usage times but it also helps keep the computer cooler. This reduces the need for extra cooling fans (which consume additional power).
Seeing Chip makers thinking 'green' is a nice change. I would assume Intel has something similar in the works. Since Intel controls roughly 75% of the chip market, it would make a much bigger impact by offering a green chip. AMD will get my business when i upgrade my Commodore 64 later this year.